Reunited: Marriage In A Million
Liz Fielding
Popular TV presenter Belle is married to gorgeous billionaire Ivo.But beneath the veneer of her perfect life is the truth of their marriage of convenience. Belle knows that workaholic Ivo prefers their family of two, but somewhere along the way she fell deeply in love with her husband, and can't help wishing for a baby.Now they must find it within themselves to share the secrets they've never trusted each other with, and make their marriage one in a million again.
Reunited: Marriage in a Million
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For Barb and Jackie, my companions,
on the journey—it was a joy working with you.
And for Liz and Gil, who did the actual pedaling.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PROLOGUE
‘THE car is here. Your paparazzi army are forming their usual guard of honour.’
Ivo was waiting, his face expressionless. Waiting for her to back down, tell him that she wouldn’t go, and Belle had to fight back the treacherous sting of tears.
She didn’t cry, ever.
Why couldn’t he understand? Why couldn’t he see that she hadn’t chosen to spend twelve days cycling over the Himalayas on some whim?
This was important to her. Something she needed to do.
By demanding she drop out at a moment’s notice to play hostess at one of his power-broking weekends at his country house in Norfolk, he was making it plain that nothing—not her career, certainly not some charity stunt—was as important as being his wife.
That he had first call on her.
If only she could have told him, explained. But if she’d done that, he wouldn’t want her to stay…
‘I have to go,’ she said.
For a moment she thought he was going to say something, but instead he nodded, picked up the heavy rucksack that contained everything she would need for the next three weeks and reached for the door handle.
By the time the door was open, Belle was wearing a smile for the cameras. She paused briefly on the step with Ivo at her side, then they made their way to the car.
The chauffeur took the rucksack and, while he was stowing it, Ivo took her hand, looked down at her with grave eyes that never betrayed what he was thinking.
‘Look after yourself.’
‘Ivo…’ She stopped herself from begging him to come to the airport with her. ‘I’ll be passing through Hong Kong on my way home. If you happened to find you had some business there, maybe we could take a few days…’
He made no comment—he never made promises he could not keep—but simply kissed her cheek, helped her into the car, repeating his directive to ‘take care’ before closing the door. She turned as the car pulled away, but he was already striding up the steps to the house, wanting to get back to work.
The chauffeur stopped at the airport drop-off point, loaded her bag on to a trolley, wished her good luck, and then she was alone. Not alone, as a woman with a loving husband waiting at home might feel.
Just…alone.
CHAPTER ONE
‘…SO THAT’S it for Day Nine of the Great Cycling Adventure. Tomorrow I’m told it’s going to be “a gentle, undulating rise”…’ Belle Davenport wiped away a trickle of sweat on her sleeve and smiled into the camera. ‘These guys really have a sense of humour. If seeing me sweating and in pain in a good cause is making you feel good, feel bad, feel anything, please remember any donation you make, no matter how small, will make a real difference…’
Belle Davenport wrapped up for the camera, hit send and, as soon as she’d got a reply confirming it had been safely received, unplugged her satellite phone. It was only then that she realised that what she had thought was sweat was, in fact, blood.
‘You do know that he brought you down quite deliberately.’ Claire Mayfield, an American sharing her tent, as well as her pain, was outraged.
‘He helped me up again,’ Belle pointed out.
‘Only after he’d taken pictures. You should make a complaint to the organisers. You could have been seriously hurt.’
‘No whining allowed,’ she said, then winced as Simone Gray—the third member of their group—having cleaned up the graze on her forehead, started to work on her grazed thigh.
‘Sorry…nearly done.’ Then, tossing the wipe away and applying a dressing, said, ‘In this world, Claire, it isn’t enough for the media that you’re putting yourself through seven kinds of torture to raise money for street kids. They want you down in the dirt too.’ Simone was executive editor of an Australian women’s magazine. She knew what she was talking about.
‘Glamour, excitement, sleazebags with cameras waiting to catch you with your face in the mud,’ Belle confirmed, with a wry smile.
‘In London, okay,’ Claire persisted. Then, ‘Actually, it’s not okay, but I suppose in your business you learn to live with the intrusion. But halfway up the Himalayas?’
‘Are we only halfway up? It feels higher.’ Then, shaking her head, Belle said, ‘Simone’s right, Claire. It’s all part of the game. No complaints. I’ve been at the top of my particular tree for a long time. I guess it’s my turn to be set up as an Aunt Sally and knocked off.’
‘Set up?’
‘Put in a position where not to do it would have made me look mean-spirited, all mouth and no trousers, so to speak. The kind of television personality who encourages others to do the hard work while she sits back on the breakfast telly sofa, flashing her teeth and as much cleavage as the network can get away with at that time in the morning.’
‘You’re not like that.’
‘No?’
‘No!’
Belle had gone for ‘arch’, but found herself profoundly touched by Claire’s belief in her.
‘Well, maybe not this time,’ she admitted, smiling to herself as she remembered just how easy it had been to manipulate the people who thought they were pulling the strings. ‘It’s amazing how far acting dumb will get you.’
‘So…what? You really wanted to come?’
‘Shh!’ She lifted a finger to her lips. ‘The walls of tents have ears.’ She grinned. ‘All it took was, “If we sent someone for this charity cycle ride it would make a great feature. Lots of opportunities to address a real problem. Get the public to join in with sponsorship.” An idle, “Who could we send?”, accompanied by just the tiniest shiver of horror at the thought, for the director to get ideas about how much the media would enjoy seeing me getting sweaty and dirty on a bike. The publicity it would generate. Got to think of those ratings…’
For Belle the pain was well worth the extra publicity it would generate for a cause dear to her heart, enabling her to support it publicly without raising any questions about why she cared so much.
Knowing that she was the one pulling the strings didn’t take the sting out of her thigh, though. And out here, in the rarefied air of the mountains, spending her time with people who’d financed themselves, who were doing it without any of the publicity circus that inevitably surrounded a breakfast show queen putting herself at the sharp end of fund raising, she was beginning to feel like a fraud. The kind of celebrity who’d do anything to stay in the spotlight, the kind of woman who’d put up with anything to stay in a hollow marriage, because without them she’d be nothing.
She pushed away the thought and said, ‘If you think this is about the children, rather than ratings, Claire, you are seriously overestimating the moral probity of breakfast television.’
It was the ratings grabbing report-to-camera straight from the day’s ride—the never-less-than-immaculate Belle Davenport reduced to a dishevelled, sweaty puddle—that the company wanted and the media were undoubtedly relishing. Why else would they have sponsored one of their own to come along and take pictures? But after a week it seemed that honest sweat had got old; now they wanted blood and tears too.
Today they’d got the blood and no doubt that was the image that would be plastered over tomorrow’s front pages and, when she got home, she’d shame them into a very large donation to her cause for that.
No way in hell were they going to get her tears.
She did not cry.
‘That’s…’ Claire grinned. ‘That’s actually pretty smart.’
‘It takes more than blonde hair and a well-developed chest to stay at the top in television,’ Simone pointed out. Then, regarding her thoughtfully, she went on, ‘So the street kids get the money, the spotlight on their plight, the television company get the ratings. What are you getting out of it, Belle?’
‘Me?’
‘You could have stayed at home, squeezing your viewers heartstrings, but you wanted to come yourself. You must have had a reason.’
‘Apart from getting myself all over the newspapers looking like this?’
‘You don’t need publicity.’
‘Everyone needs publicity,’ she said, but her laughter had a hollow ring and neither of her two companions joined in. ‘No, well, maybe I just wanted to feel good about myself. Isn’t that why everyone does this kind of stunt?’
‘If that’s the plan,’ Claire said, lying back on her bedroll with a groan, ‘it isn’t working. All I feel is sore.’
‘Maybe the feeling good part kicks in later,’ Belle replied sympathetically.
She knew she hadn’t been the only one who’d gone through a three-ring circus to get here. No matter how much she hated it, she understood that even when the redtops had people digging in your dustbin for dirt they could use, it wasn’t personal.
For Claire, though, a pampered princess with a token job working in her father’s empire, the sniggering criticism had been just that. Deeply personal.
What the hell; they’d shown them. With a determined attempt at brightness, Belle continued, ‘In the meantime I’ve lost weight, improved my muscle tone, gained some blisters…’
‘No.’
She gave up on the distraction of her newly-defined calf muscles and caught something—a bleakness to Simone’s expression that was new.
‘What have you got out of this?’ she demanded. ‘Seriously.’
‘Seriously?’ She looked from Simone to Claire and realised they were both regarding her with a sudden intensity, that the atmosphere in the tent had shifted. Darkened.
‘Seriously.’ Belle took a deep breath. ‘Seriously’ meant confronting the truth. ‘Seriously’ meant having to do something about it. But, forget the publicity, forget the cameras—that was what this trip had been all about. Stepping out of her comfort zone. Putting herself out there. Doing something real. Except she wasn’t, not really. She was still hiding. From the world. From her husband. Most of all from herself.
‘You can see so far up here,’ Belle began uncertainly. Not quite sure what she was going to say. Where this was going. ‘When we stopped for that drinks break this afternoon, I looked back and you could see the road we’d travelled winding all the way back down to the valley.’
She faced the rangy Australian, the petite American, who shared her tent. They’d tended each other’s grazes, rubbed liniment into each other’s aching muscles, they’d eaten together, battling with chopsticks while vowing never to travel again without a fork in their rucksack. They’d laughed, ridden alongside each other since they’d found themselves sharing a cab from the airport to the hotel when they’d first arrived, each of them scared in a what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here? way, yet excited by the challenge they were facing. Outwardly, they were women who had everything and yet they’d seemed to recognise something in each other, some hidden need.
Instant soul mates, they had become true friends.
It was a new experience for Belle. She’d never had girl-friends. Not as a kid, struggling to survive, not in the care home, certainly not in the stab-in-the-back atmosphere of daytime television.
The media bosses, the tabloid hacks, the gossip mags, all used her to lift circulation in a way that made her sister-in-law curl her lips in disdain. And her husband, money-machine tycoon Ivo Grenville, whose eyes burned with lust—the only thing he was unable to control—despised himself for wanting her so much that he’d committed the ultimate sacrifice and married her.
None of them bothered to look deeper than the ‘blonde bombshell’ image that she’d fallen into by accident, to find out who she really was. Not that she blamed them. She wore her image like a sugar-coated veneer; only she knew how thin it was.
These two women, total strangers when they’d met a couple of weeks earlier, knew her better than most, had seen her at her most vulnerable, had shared their lives with her. All of them, on the surface, had everything; Claire was the daughter of one of the world’s wealthiest men and Simone had risen to the top in a very tough business. But outward appearances could be deceptive. She’d been trusted with glimpses into their lives that few people had seen, which was why she knew that Claire and Simone would understand what she’d felt when she’d looked back down the road.
It was steep, hard going, and all the twists and turns were laid out before her—a metaphor for her life. Then, before the threatening crack became unstoppable, she let it go and said, ‘How many more days is this torture going to last?’
‘Three,’ Simone said quickly, apparently as anxious as she was to step back from a yawning chasm that had opened up in front of them.
‘Three? Can I survive three more days without a decent bed, clean sheets?’ Claire asked.
‘Without a hot bath.’
‘Without a manicure,’ Belle added, apparently intent on examining her nails, but she was more interested in Simone’s obvious relief that the moment of introspection that she herself had provoked had been safely navigated. Then, because actually her nails did look terrible, ‘I’m going to have to have extensions,’ she sighed.
Normally long, painted, perfect, she’d trimmed them short for the ride, but now they were cracked, dry, ingrained with dirt that no amount of cold water would shift. As she looked at them, dark memories stirred and she curled her fingers into her palm, out of sight.
‘What’s the first thing you’ll do when we hit that hotel in Hong Kong?’ she asked.
‘After I’ve run a hot bath?’ Claire grinned. ‘Call room service and order smoked salmon, half a ton of watercress served with dark rye bread cut wafer-thin and spread with fresh butter.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘And chocolate fudge cake.’
‘I’ll go along with that and raise you ice-cold champagne,’ Belle added, grinning.
‘The champagne sounds good,’ Simone said, ‘but I vote we pass on the healthy stuff and go straight for the chocolate fudge cake.’
‘White chocolate fudge cake,’ Belle said. ‘And a hot tub to sit in while we eat it.’
‘Er…that’s a great idea,’ Claire said, ‘but won’t your husband have ideas of his own in the hot tub department?’
‘Ivo?’ Belle found herself struggling to keep the smile going.
‘He is coming to meet you?’
For a moment she allowed herself that fantasy; that she’d reach the end of the journey and he’d be there, scooping her up into his arms. Carrying her off to a luxury suite to make hot sweet love to her.
With the slightest shake of her head, she said, ‘No.’ About to make some excuse for him—pressure of business was always a safe one—she found she couldn’t do it. ‘To tell you the truth,’ she said, ‘I’m in the marital doghouse.’ With the smallest gesture she took in their cramped surroundings. ‘He didn’t want me to do this.’
‘You’re kidding?’ Claire frowned. ‘I thought he was so supportive. I’ve seen pictures of you guys in those lifestyle magazines. The way he looks at you. The way it reads, you have the perfect marriage.’
‘You mean captions like…“Breakfast television’s bombshell, Belle Davenport, ravishing in Valentino, arriving at a royal gala last night with her millionaire businessman husband, Ivo Grenville.”?’
They always printed one of her arriving—that moment when she leaned forward as Ivo helped her from the car. The one that never failed to catch the look of a man who couldn’t wait to get her home again, feeding the fantasy that had grown around them after their ‘couldn’t wait’ runaway marriage on a tropical island.
At least the looks were real enough. His desire was the one thing she’d never doubted. As for the rest…
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m the original one hundred per cent genuine trophy wife.’ The bitter words spilled out of her before she could stop them. The only difference was that he hadn’t dumped a long-serving first wife for her; on the contrary, she was the one who’d be dumped when he wanted a proper wife. The kind you had kids and grew old with. ‘He was throwing a shooting party last weekend on his estate in Norfolk. A business thing. He wanted me on show. The hostess with the mostest.’ She pulled a face. ‘I don’t have to explain what I’ve got the most of, do I?’ she said as, hand behind her head, she leaned forward, giving the girls a mock cupcake cleavage pose.
‘You’ve got a lot more than that,’ Simone chipped in. ‘Holding down a job in television takes a lot more than a perfect pair of D cups. And the kind of party you’re talking about takes a serious amount of organising.’
‘Not by me.’
Her sister-in-law, Ivo’s live-in social secretary and a woman with more breeding than a pedigree chum, handled all that. But then she had been born to it. Benendon, finishing school in Switzerland, the statutory Cordon Bleu, Constance Spry courses for the girls-in-pearls debutantes. Another world…
‘I’m just there for display purposes to show his business competitors that there isn’t a thing they can do that he can’t do better.’
‘Oh, Belle…’ Claire seemed lost for words.
Simone was more direct. ‘If that’s all there is to your marriage, Belle, why do you stay with him?’
‘Honestly?’ They were high in the Himalayas, the air was stingingly cold, clear, cleaner than anything she’d ever known. Anything but the truth would pollute it. ‘For the security. The safety. The knowledge that, married to him, I’ll never be hungry or cold or frightened ever again…’
The truth, but not the whole truth. Passion, security, she would admit to. Falling in love with him had been the mistake…
‘But you’re bright, successful in your own right—’
‘Am I?’ She shrugged. ‘From the outside I suppose it looks like that, but every day of my life I expect someone to find me out, expose me as a fraud…’ Simone made a tiny sound, almost of distress, but shook her head quickly as Belle frowned. ‘Let’s face it, there’s no one as unemployable as a past-her-sell-by-date breakfast television host.’ Even as she said it, she knew that she was just making excuses. She was not extravagant and with Ivo’s skilful investment of her money, the only thing she truly needed from him was the one commodity he was unable to give. Himself.
There was an emotional vacuum at the heart of her life that had started long before she’d met him. He was not the only one incapable of making a wholehearted commitment to their partnership. She was equally to blame and now it was time to call it a day. Make the break. Let him go.
She’d known it for a long time, just hadn’t had the courage to admit it, face up to what that would mean.
‘If you want the unadorned truth,’ she said, ‘I hate my career, I hate my marriage—’
Not that she blamed Ivo for that. He was trapped by his hormones in exactly the same way that she was trapped by her own pitiful fears. They were, it occurred to her, very bad for each other.
‘In fact, when it comes right down to it, I hate my life.’ She thought about it. ‘No, scrub that. I guess I just hate myself—’
‘Belle, honey…’
As they reached out to offer some kind of comfort, she shook her head, not wanting it. Not deserving it from these special women. ‘I’ve got a sister somewhere, back there. Lost on the road.’ She didn’t have to explain. She knew they’d understand that she wasn’t talking about the road they were travelling together, but the one leading back to the past. ‘I haven’t seen her since she was four years old.’
‘Four?’ Claire frowned. ‘What happened to her? Did your family split up?’
‘Family?’ She gave a short laugh. ‘I’m not like you…’ She sucked in her breath, trying to hold back the words. Then, slowly she finished the sentence. ‘I’m not like you, Claire.’ She glanced at Simone, who was unusually quiet, and on an impulse she reached out, laid a hand over hers. ‘Or Simone.’ Then, lifting her chin a little. ‘We’re here to raise money for street kids, right? Well, that was me. It’s why I made such a big thing of this fund raiser. Why I’m here.’ Feeling exposed in the way an alcoholic must feel the first time he admitted he had a problem, she said, ‘My real name is Belinda Porter and I was once a street kid.’
She’d never told anyone where she’d come from. Anything about herself. On the contrary, she’d done everything she could to scrub it out of her mind. Not even Ivo knew. He’d had the tidied-up fairy story version of her life: the one with kindly foster parents—who she’d conveniently killed off in a tragic car accident—a business course at the local college—not the straight from school dead-end job in a call centre. Only the lucky break of being drafted in to work the phones on the biggest national fund raising telethon had been true, but then she’d been ‘discovered’ live on air; everyone knew that story.
How could she blame him for a lack of emotional commitment to her when she had kept most of her life hidden from him? A husband deserved more than that.
She swallowed. ‘My mother, my sister, the three of us begged just to live,’ she said. ‘Exactly like the children we’re here to help.’
For a moment no one spoke.
Then Claire said, ‘What happened to her, Belle? Your sister.’
That was it? No shrinking away in horror? Just compassion? Concern…?
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing bad. Our mother died.’ She shook her head. That was a nightmare she’d spent years trying to erase. ‘Social Services did their best, but looking back it’s obvious that I was the kind of teenage girl who gives decent women nightmares. Our mother was protective, would have fought off a tiger to keep us from harm, from the danger out there, but I’d seen too much, knew too much. I was trouble just waiting to happen. Daisy was still young enough to adapt. And she was so pretty. White-blonde curls, blue eyes. Doll-like, you know? A social worker laid it out for me. It was too late for me but, given a chance, she could have a real family life.’
‘That must have hurt so much.’
She looked up, grateful for Claire’s intuitive understanding of just how painful it had been to be unwanted.
‘It’s odd,’ she said, ‘because I was the one named after a doll. Belinda. Maybe it was some need in her to reach back to a time of innocence, hope.’ She shook her head. ‘It never suited me. I was never that kind of little girl.’
‘You have the blonde hair.’
‘Bless you, Claire,’ she said with a grin, ‘but this particular shade of blonde is courtesy of a Knightsbridge crimper who charges telephone numbers. She pulled on a strand, made a face. He’s going to have a fit when he sees the state of it.’
She reached for the sewing kit. There was no hairdresser here and no wardrobe department to produce a clean, fresh pair of trousers for the morning. If she didn’t stitch up the tear, her thigh would be flapping in the wind.
‘Daisy was different,’ she said, concentrating on threading a needle. ‘I hated her so much for being able to smile at the drop of a hat. Smile so that people would want to mother her, love her.’ Her hands were shaking too much and she gave up on the needle. ‘I hated her so much that I let someone walk away with her, adopt her, turned my back on her. Lost her.’
‘I lost someone, too.’
Claire, suddenly the focus of their attention, gave an awkward little shrug. ‘It must be this place, or maybe it’s just that here life is pared down to the basics. The next marker, the next drink of water, the next meal. Meeting with the people who exist here on the bare essentials.’ She took Belle’s needle, threaded it, began to work on the torn trousers. ‘There are no distractions, none of the day-to-day white noise of life to block out stuff you’d rather not think about and with nothing else to keep it occupied, the mind throws up stuff you’ve put in your memory’s deep storage facility. Not wanted in this life.’
‘Who did you lose, Claire?’ Simone, pale beneath the tan that no amount of sun screen could entirely block in the thin air, almost whispered the words.
‘My husband. Ethan. A decent, hard-working man…’
‘I had no idea you’d been married,’ Belle said.
Claire looked at her ringless hand, flexed her fingers, then with a little shiver said, ‘As far as the world is concerned, it never happened. One messy little marriage discreetly dissolved with a stroke of a lawyer’s pen.’
‘It can’t have been that simple.’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised just how simple money can make things.’ Then, ‘In my defence, I was twenty-one years old and desperate to get away from my father. He isn’t that easy to escape. He paid my husband to disappear and I was weak, I let him.’
‘Twenty-one? You were practically a kid.’
Claire lifted her head, straightened her back. ‘Old enough to have known better. To have been stronger.’ Then, ‘He’s been on my mind a lot lately. Ethan. I guess it’s all part of this.’ Her gesture took in the tent, their surroundings. ‘I work for my father, but as far as the rest of his staff are concerned I’m a joke, a pampered princess with a make-work job whose only concern is the next manicure, the latest pair of designer shoes. I came on this charity ride to shake up that image, to prove, to myself at least, that I’m better than that.’
‘And finding Ethan would help?’ Belle asked. ‘He did take the money and run,’ she pointed out.
‘Why wouldn’t he? I didn’t do anything, say anything to stop him.’ She shook her head. ‘It would undermine a man’s confidence, something like that, don’t you think? I need to find him, make sure that he’s all right.’ She swallowed. ‘More than that. I need him to forgive me. If he can find it in his heart to do that, then maybe I’ll be able to forgive myself.’
Simone, who’d been increasingly quiet, covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a moan. ‘Forgive yourself? Who will forgive me?’ As Claire, all concern, reached out to her, took her hand, a sob escaped her and then it all came pouring out of her, like a breached dam. A story so terrible that it made Belle’s own loss seem almost bearable.
For a heartbeat, after she’d finished her story, there was total silence as Simone waited, her eyes anticipating horrified rejection. As one, Belle and Claire put their arms around her, held her.
‘I can’t believe I told you that,’ she said finally, when she could speak. ‘I can’t believe you still want to know me.’
‘I can’t believe you’ve kept it bottled up for so long,’ Claire said tenderly.
‘Some secrets are so bad that it takes something special for us to be able to find the words,’ Belle said quietly. ‘It seems that each of us needs to walk back a way, make our peace with the past.’
‘This journey we’re on isn’t going to be over when we fall into a hot bath, crawl between clean sheets, is it?’ Claire whispered. ‘This has just been the beginning.’
‘The easy bit.’ Belle swallowed, feeling a little as if she’d just stepped off the edge of a precipice.
‘But at least we won’t be alone. We’ll have each other.’
‘Will we? You’ll be home in America, Simone will be back in Australia and I’ll be in England, looking for Daisy. She could be anywhere.’ Then, ‘I could be anywhere.’
Belle closed her eyes and for a moment the fear was so great that all she wanted to do was turn the clock back to the second before she stopped on the road and looked back. If she just kept facing forward, moving forward, she wouldn’t see the demons snapping at her heels. Then, as if sensing her fear, Claire took one of her hands, Simone the other.
‘It’s not just Daisy I have to find,’ she said, turning her hands to grasp them. ‘I’ve been living behind this image for so long that I’m not sure who I am any more. I need to be on my own. To get away from all the pretence.’
‘Belle…’ Simone regarded her with concern. ‘Don’t do anything rash. Ivo could help you.’
She shook her head.
‘I’ve used him as a prop for long enough. Some journeys you have to take alone.’
‘Not alone,’ Claire quickly assured her. ‘You’ll have us.’
‘If you have to do this, Belle, we’ll be there for you.’ Simone straightened. ‘For each other. Support, encouragement, a cyber-shoulder to cry on and with three time-zones we’ll have 24/7 coverage!’
They both looked to Belle and the three of them clasped hands, too choked to speak.
Belle hadn’t told anyone when to expect her. If she’d phoned ahead, the television company would have sent a car or Ivo’s sister would have despatched the chauffeur to pick her up. But having made the decision to cut her ties with both marriage and job, it seemed hypocritical to use either of them.
Or maybe just stupid, she thought as she abandoned the endless queue for taxis and headed down into the underground to catch a train into London.
She’d have to turn up for work until her contract expired at the end of the month.
She pulled a face at this reminder that her agent—right now pulling out all the stops as he negotiated a new contract for her—was someone else she was going to have to face…who was never going to understand.
She wasn’t sure she understood herself. It had all seemed so clear up in the mountains, so simple when she’d made that life-changing pact with Claire and Simone and they’d sealed it with their last bar of chocolate.
Back in London, faced with reality, she felt very alone and she shivered as, with a rush of air, the train pulled in to the station.
She climbed aboard, settled into a corner and automatically took out a book to avoid direct eye contact with the passengers opposite. Scarcely necessary. Who would recognise her, bundled up against the raw November chill, no make-up, her hair covered in a scarf twisted around like a turban to disguise the damage wrought by six weeks without the attention of her stylist?
How easily one slid from instantly recognisable celebrity to some woman no one would glance at twice on the underground.
Without the constant attention of those people whose job it was to polish her appearance, the lifestyle magazines, the safety net of her marriage, her career, who would she be?
What would it take for her to fall right off the face of civilisation, the way her mother had? One bad decision, one wrong turning and she, too, could be spiralling downward…
Fear crawled over her, prickling her skin, bringing her out in a cold sweat, and an urge to abandon all her grand ideals, crawl back into the comfort zone of the life she had and be grateful for it, overwhelmed her.
Daisy didn’t need her.
In all likelihood she’d forgotten she even existed. What would be the point of selfishly blundering in, disturbing her doubtless perfect life with memories they’d all rather bury, just to ease her own conscience?
Wouldn’t the selfless thing be to trace her, find out what she needed and help her anonymously, from a distance, the way she had always supported charities that helped street kids?
Daisy was nineteen, at university in all likelihood. She’d probably die of embarrassment to be confronted by a sister whose success was due solely to the size of her bosom, the huskiness in her voice.
Worse, once the press found out about her sister—and it was inevitable that they would—they’d keep digging until they had it all.
No teenager needed that and there were other ways to redeem herself. Daisy would need somewhere to live. She could fix that for her somehow. Ivo would know…
She caught herself.
Not Ivo. Her. She’d find out.
She exited from the underground station to the relative peace of Saturday morning in the capital before the shops had opened and was immediately confronted by a man selling The Big Issue—the badge of the homeless. She fought, as she always had to, the desperate urge to run away and instead forced herself to stand, take out the money to buy a copy of the magazine, shake her head when he offered her change. Wish him good luck before hailing a passing black cab and making her escape. Pushing away the thought that she could have done more.
The driver nodded as she leaned in to give her address. ‘Welcome back, Miss Davenport.’
The immediate recognition was a balm, warming her, making her feel safe. ‘The disguise isn’t working, then?’ she said, relaxing into a smile.
‘You’d have to wear a paper bag over your head, miss.’ Then, when she’d given him her address, climbed in the back, ‘The missus’ll be chuffed when I tell her I had you in the back. She’s been following your bike ride. Sponsored you herself.’
‘How kind. What’s her name?’
She made a mental note so that she could mention her donation when she went back on air on Monday, chatted for a few minutes, then fished the cellphone out of her pocket and turned it on.
It hunted for a local network, then beeped, warning her that she had seventeen new messages.
‘Please call…’ from her agent.
‘Please call…’ from the director of her show. ‘Please call…Please call…’ The reassuring template messages of her life. And, just like that, the fear, never far below the surface, dissipated.
Smiling, she flicked the button to next and found herself reading, ‘I wish you were my sister, Belle. Good luck. Hugs.’ Not a template message, not business, but a ‘care’ message from Claire, sent before she’d boarded her own plane back to the States.
The next, from Simone, said, ‘Are you as scared as me?’ Scared? Simone? Brilliant, successful, practically perfect Simone who, like her, like Claire, had a dark secret that haunted her.
She’d left them in the departure lounge at the airport in Hong Kong and it had felt as if she was tearing off an arm to leave them. And now they’d reached out and touched her just at the point at which her resolve was on the point of crumbling. For a moment she was too shaken to move.
‘We’re here, Miss Davenport,’ the driver said and she looked up, realised that the cab had stopped.
‘One moment.’ She quickly thumbed in her reply to Claire. ‘I wish you were, too!’. True. If Claire were her sister she wouldn’t be faced with this.
To Simone she began, ‘We don’t have to do this…’ Except that wasn’t what Simone wanted from her. What they’d all signed up to. She wanted, deserved, encouragement, the mutual support they’d promised each other. Not permission to bottle out at the first faint-heart moment from someone who was looking for an excuse to do the same.
A week ago in the clear, clean air of the Himalayas, in the company of two women who, for the first time in her adult life she’d been able to open up to, confide in, be totally honest with, she’d felt as if she’d seen a glimpse of something rare, something special that could be hers if only she had the courage to reach for it.
The minute she’d set foot in London, all the horrors of her childhood seemed to reach out from the pavement to grab at her, haul her back where she belonged and, terrified, she couldn’t wait to scuttle back into the safety of her gilded cage, pulling the door shut behind her.
She looked at the phone and realised that whatever message she sent now, fight or flee, would set the course of the rest of her life.
She closed her eyes, put herself back in the place she’d been a few days ago, then wrote a new message.
‘Scared witless, but we can do this.’ And hit send.
A fine sentiment, she thought as she climbed from the cab and stood, clutching her rucksack, outside the Belgravia town house that had been her husband’s family home for generations.
Now all she had to do was prove it.
CHAPTER TWO
BELLE walked through the open front door and, if her heart could have sunk any lower, the view through the dining room doors to the chaos of caterers and florists in full cry would have sent it to her boots. She’d arrived in the middle of preparations for one of Ivo’s power-broking dinners that her sister-in-law would be directing with the same concentration and attention to detail as a five-star general planning a campaign.
About to toss in the proverbial hand grenade, she kept her head down and headed straight for the library, where she knew she’d find her husband.
The fact that it was barely past nine o’clock on a Saturday morning made no difference to Ivo Grenville, only that he’d be working at home rather than at his office.
He didn’t look up as she opened the door, giving her a precious few seconds to look at him, imprint the memory.
One elbow was propped on the desk, his forehead resting on long fingers, his world reduced to the document in front of him.
He had this ability to focus totally on one thing to the exclusion of everything else, whether it was acquiring a new company, a conversation in the lift with his lowliest employee, making love to his wife. He did everything with the same attention to detail, intensity, perfectionism. If, just once, he’d cracked, had an off-day like the rest of the human race, seemed fallible…
The ache in her throat intensified as, with a pang of tenderness she saw the dark hollows at his temple, a touch of silver that she hadn’t noticed before threaded through the thick cowlick of dark hair that slid across his hand. He was tired, she thought. He drove himself too hard, working hours that would be considered inhuman if he’d expected his staff to emulate him, and she longed to be able to just go to him, put her arms around him, silently soothe away the stress…
Just be a wife.
He dragged his hand down over his face, long fingers pinching the bridge of his nose as, eyes closed, he gathered himself to continue.
Then, maybe remembering the sound of the door opening, he looked up and caught her flat-footed, without her defences in place.
‘Belle?’ He rose slowly to his feet, saying her name as if he couldn’t believe it was her. Not that surprising. He’d never seen her looking like this before. The advantage of not sharing a bedroom with her husband was that he never saw her with morning hair, skin crumpled from a night with her face in a pillow. Definitely not in clothes she’d been travelling in for the better part of twenty-four hours, with nothing on her face to hide behind but a thin film of moisturiser. It was little wonder that for a moment he appeared uncharacteristically lost. ‘I didn’t expect you until tomorrow.’
Not exactly an accusation of thoughtlessness, but a very long way from expressing delight that she was home a day early.
‘I switched to an earlier flight.’
‘How did you get from the airport?’ That was all the time it took him to gather himself, concentrate on the practicalities. ‘If you’d called, Miranda would have sent the car.’
Not him, but his ever present, ever helpful little sister. Always there. As focused and perfect as Ivo himself. Too rich to have to bother with building a career, she was simply marking time until some man—heaven help him—who met her requirements in breeding, who was her equal in wealth, realised that she would make the perfect wife.
It was Miranda, not her, who was the chatelaine here, running her brother’s social diary and his house with pinpoint precision. The person the staff looked to for their orders.
Who’d had a separate suite ready for her when they’d returned from their honeymoon so that her 4:00 a.m. starts wouldn’t disturb Ivo.
That was the inviolable rule of the house. Nothing must be allowed to disturb Ivo.
Not even his wife.
Little wonder, Belle thought, that she’d always felt more like a guest here. Tolerated for the one thing she could give him that not even the most brilliant sister could deliver.
Even now she had to fight the programmed need to apologise for her lapse of good manners in arriving before she was expected. The truth was that she hadn’t rung to tell Ivo the change to her schedule because to call would be to hope that just this once he’d drive down to Heathrow himself, join the crowd of eager husbands and wives waiting for that first glimpse of a loved one as they spilled out into the arrivals hall. Just as she’d hoped that he would, despite what she’d told Claire and Simone, fly to Hong Kong to meet her.
Her heart just wouldn’t quit hoping.
But his momentary lapse from absolute certainty had given her the necessary few seconds to gather herself, restore the protective shell she wore to disguise her true feelings, and she was able to shrug and say, ‘It seemed less bother to get the train. No,’ she said quickly, as he finally abandoned his papers, stopping him before he could touch her, kiss her. ‘I’ve been travelling for twenty-four hours. I’m not fit to be touched.’
For a moment he looked as if he might dispute that. For the second time she glimpsed a suggestion of hesitation, uncertainty. She was usually the one hovering on the edge of the unspoken word, afraid that the slightest hint of emotional need would bring the whole edifice of her marriage crashing down about her ears.
Outside, in the real world, wearing her Belle Davenport persona, she wasn’t like that. She could play that part without thinking.
And at night, in the privacy of her room where, with one touch, the brittle politeness melted away, his distance dissolving in the heat of a passion that reduced their world to a population of two, it seemed anything was possible.
But afterwards there was no tenderness, no small talk about their day. He was not interested in her world, had no desire to discuss his own concerns with her. Felt no need to sleep with his arms around her, holding her close for comfort, but left her to her early morning alarm call while he, undisturbed, got on with his real life.
It was the role of wife—beyond the basics of the bedroom—that she’d never been able to fully master. But then, with Miranda immovably entrenched in every other aspect of the role, there had never truly been a vacancy for a wife. Only a concubine.
Hard as this was going to be, she knew it could not be as difficult as staying. ‘Can we talk, Ivo?’
‘Talk?’ His frown was barely perceptible, but it was there. ‘Now?’
‘Yes, now.’
‘Don’t you want to sort yourself out? Take a shower?’ He glanced back at his desk. He didn’t have to say the words; it was plain that he had more important things to do.
‘For heaven’s sake, Ivo, it’s Saturday,’ she snapped, losing patience, needing to be done with this. Get it over. ‘The stock markets are closed.’
‘This isn’t…’ he began. Then, ‘It’ll take ten minutes, fifteen at the most.’
She’d been away for weeks. Any other man would have dropped whatever he was doing, eager to see her, talk to her, ask how she was, how it had been. Tell her that he was glad to have her home. If he’d done that, she thought, the words sitting like a lump in her throat would have dissolved, evaporated. She could not have said them. But for Ivo business always came first, while she was an inconvenience, a constant reminder of his one weakness…
‘Why don’t you go up? I’ll be there just as soon as I’ve finished this,’ he suggested and, without waiting, he turned back to his desk. ‘We can talk then.’
No. That wasn’t how it worked. Not that he wouldn’t come. Fifteen minutes from now she’d be in the shower and he’d join her there, demonstrating with his body, as he never could with words, exactly how much he’d missed her.
The only thing they wouldn’t do was talk.
Afterwards, after the drugging pleasures of his body that would drive everything from her mind, she’d wake, as always alone—he’d have gone back to work—and there would be some trinket left at the bedside: something rare and beautiful, befitting her status as his wife, an acknowledgement that he’d been selfish, unreasonable about the Himalayan trip. She would wear whatever it was at dinner, a wordless acceptance of his unspoken apology.
Not today, she promised herself, her hand tightening around the tiny cellphone in her pocket—a direct connection to Simone, Claire. Women who knew more about her than her own husband. They’d spent every free minute of the last few days talking about their lives, the past, the future; they had listened, understood, cared about her in ways he never could. With them to support her she would find the strength to break out of the compartment he’d made for her. He might be satisfied with this relationship—and why wouldn’t he be?—but she needed more, much more…
‘No, Ivo.’ Already, in his head, back with whatever project she’d interrupted, he didn’t seem to hear her. ‘I’m afraid it won’t.’ He stopped, turned slowly. ‘Wait.’
His skin was taut across his face, emphasising the high cheekbones, the aristocratic nose, a mouth that could reduce her to mindless, whimpering jelly and, looking at him, Belle found it achingly hard to say the words that would put an end to her marriage.
He did nothing to help her but, keeping his distance, the tips of his fingers resting on the corner of his desk, a barrier between them, he waited, still and silent, for her to speak. It was almost, she thought, as if he knew what she was going to say. If so, he knew more than she did.
‘This is difficult,’ she began.
‘Then…then my advice is to keep it simple.’ His voice, usually crisp and incisive, was slightly blurred. Or maybe it was him that was blurred behind a veil of something she was very afraid might be tears.
‘Yes,’ she said, and blinked to clear her vision. No tears. She’d learned a long time ago not to show that kind of weakness. ‘Yes,’ she said again. This was not something that could be wrapped up in soft words. Somehow made less painful with padding. Simple, direct, to the point, with no possibility of misunderstanding. That was the way to do it. ‘I’m sorry but I can’t live with you any more, Ivo. I’m setting you free of our deal.’
‘Free?’
‘We said, didn’t we, that it wasn’t a till-death-us-do-part deal. That either of us could walk away at any time.’ Then, when he did not respond, ‘I’m walking away, Ivo.’
Predicting his reaction to such a bald announcement had been beyond her, but if she’d hoped that his cool façade would finally crack, she’d have been disappointed. There was no visible reaction. He looked neither shocked nor surprised, but then he’d made a life’s work of being unreadable, keeping the world guessing. The fact that he could do it to her confirmed everything she had known about her marriage, but until last week had been too weak to confront.
His response, when it finally came, was practical rather than emotional. ‘Where will you go?’
That was it?
Not, ‘Why?’ Or did he believe he already knew the answer to that? Assumed that the only reason she would leave him was because she’d found someone else? The thought sickened her…
‘Does it matter?’ she asked abruptly.
‘Yes, it matters…’ He bit off the words, shook his head. ‘Manda will need to know where to forward your mail.’
On the point of saying something very rude about his sister, she stopped herself. This was not Miranda’s fault. And she was not hiding from him, running away. Just distancing herself. For both their sakes. ‘The tenants moved out of my flat last month,’ she explained. ‘I’ll stay there.’
‘That won’t do—’
‘It’s what I want,’ she cut in before he could take over and set about organising accommodation that he considered more acceptable for someone who bore his name.
He didn’t look happy about it, but he let it go and said, ‘Very well.’ Then, ‘Is that it?’
No!
Her heart cried out the word, but she kept her mouth closed and, getting no answer, he nodded and returned to his desk to resume the work she had interrupted.
Numb, frozen out, cut off by a wall of ice, she was left with nothing to do but pack her immediate needs and leave.
Miranda emerged from the dining room as she headed for the stairs.
‘Belle? What are you doing here? I didn’t expect you back until tomorrow.’
‘It’s lovely to see you too,’ she said, without stopping, without looking back.
Ivo Grenville was staring blindly at the document in front of him when his sister, taking advantage of the door that Belle hadn’t bothered to close on her way out, walked into the library.
‘What’s the matter with Belle?’ she asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, ‘Honestly, she might have had the good manners to let me know she was coming back today.’
‘Why should she? This is her…’ He faltered on the word ‘home’, but his sister was too busy waving his objection away with an impatient gesture to notice.
‘That’s not the point. Even if I can drum up another man for tonight, I’ll have to totally rearrange the seating. And the caterers are going to—’
‘No.’
‘No? You mean she won’t be joining us for dinner?’ She relaxed. ‘Well, thank goodness for that. To be honest, she did look a mess, but I’ve no doubt people would run around, pull out all the stops for her. One smile and people just fall over themselves—’
‘No!’ He so rarely raised his voice, and never to her, that she was shocked into silence. ‘You won’t have to rearrange the seating because tonight’s dinner is cancelled.’
‘Cancelled?’ Her laugh, uncertain, died as she saw his face. ‘Ivo…?’ Then, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t cancel this late. The Ambassador, the Foreign Secretary…What possible reason can I give?’
‘I neither know nor care, but if you’re stuck for an excuse why don’t you tell our guests that my wife has just announced that she’s leaving me and I’m not in the mood to make small talk. I’m sure they’ll understand.’
‘Leaving you? But she can’t!’ Then, flushing, ‘Oh, I see. Who—’
‘Manda, please,’ he said, cutting her off before she could put into words the thoughts that had flashed through his mind. Thoughts that shamed him. Belle had never been less than forthright, honest with him. She’d wanted security; he’d wanted her…‘Not another word.’
He heard the door close very quietly and finally he sat back, abandoning the documents that moments before he’d insisted were too important to wait. Nothing was that important but, in the instant when he’d looked up and seen Belle, he’d known what was coming. It was in her eyes, the look he’d been waiting for, dreading, had always known would one day come. Security, for a woman of such warmth, such passion, was never going to be enough.
His first thought had been to postpone it, delay it, do anything to give himself time.
Another hour. Another day…
Each and every day of his working life he took a few precious minutes out of his morning to watch her as she lit up the television screen in his office. Each day, while she’d been away, he’d seen the change in her, had felt her moving away from him, had recognised the danger. Maybe it had begun even before she’d left; he just hadn’t wanted to see it. Maybe that was why he had tried so hard to stop her going on the trip.
He opened the desk drawer, pushing aside the ticket to Hong Kong, bought on the day he’d watched, agonised, as she’d talked into the camera, smiling even though there was blood trickling down her face. Plans he’d been forced to abandon when a crisis had blown up over a project he’d embarked upon.
He’d told himself that it didn’t matter. That he would drive down to the airport and meet her flight. Give her the necklace he’d had made for her with the diamonds his mother had worn on her wedding day.
Wrong on both counts.
Belle didn’t bother with the shower; she didn’t want to spend one minute more than necessary in this house. What she did need were clothes, and since she was due back at work first thing on Monday morning that involved rather more than a change of underwear and a pair of jeans.
She stared helplessly at the dozens of outfits that had been carefully chosen to provoke the desire in the red-blooded male to wake up each morning to her presence on the television screen, the wish in every female breast to be her best friend.
It was a difficult trick to pull off. Between them, however, the designers and the image consultants had managed it. Everything about her that the public recognised as ‘Belle Davenport’, her life, her marriage, had been airbrushed so thoroughly that she’d forgotten what was real and what was little more than a media fabrication.
Maybe that was why, for so long, she had felt she was running on empty. That if she stopped concentrating for a second the floor would open up beneath her feet and she’d disappear.
Suddenly losing it, unable to keep up the pretence for another minute, she turned her back on them and tossed the bare essentials in a holdall—underwear, shoes, a few basics, the first things that came to hand.
What else? She looked around. Make-up…
She grabbed for a gold-topped glass pot but her hands were shaking and it slipped through her fingers, shattered, splashing pale beige cream in a wide arc over the centuries-old polished oak floor, an antique rug. With a cry of dismay, she bent to pick up the pieces of glass.
‘Leave it!’
Ivo…
‘Leave it,’ he said, taking her hand, pulling it away from the glass. ‘You’ll cut yourself.’
Her skin shivered at his touch; his hand was cool and yet heat radiated from his fingers, warming her—as he never failed to warm her—so that the siren call of everything in her that was female urged her to let him lift her up into his arms, to hold him, tell him that she didn’t mean it. That she would never leave him. That nothing else mattered but to be here with him.
He touched her cheek, then pushed back her hair to look at the graze on her forehead, regarding her with eyes the colour of the ocean, a shifting mix of blue, green, grey that, as with the sea, betrayed his mood. Today they were a bleak grey, her doing she knew, and she forced herself to turn away from his touch as if to gather up the rest of her make-up. It was easier to cope with his reflection in the mirror than face to face.
‘Is this because I didn’t want you to go away, Belle?’ he asked, his hands on her shoulders, his thumbs working softly against the muscles, easing the tension as they had done times without number in a prelude to an intimacy that needed no words.
His touch shivered through her, undermining her will. She’d lingered too long. He’d taken it as a sign that she was just having a bit of a strop, throwing her teddy out of the pram, was waiting for him to come up and make a performance of appeasing her.
‘No,’ she said. That he didn’t want her to go away was understandable, but she couldn’t allow him to use her weakness to stop her from leaving. ‘It’s because we don’t have a marriage, Ivo. We don’t share anything. Because I want something you’re incapable of giving.’
In the mirror she saw him blench.
‘You’re my wife, Belle. Everything I have is yours—’
‘I’m your weakness, Ivo,’ she said, cutting him short. This wasn’t about property, security. ‘You desire me. You have a need that I satisfy.’
‘And you? Don’t I satisfy you?’
‘Physically? You know the answer to that.’ When he held her, the flames of that desire were enough to warm her, body and soul. But when he turned away she was left with ice. ‘You have given me everything that I asked of you. But what we have is not a marriage.’
‘You’re tired,’ he said, his voice cobweb-soft against her ear. The truth was it didn’t matter what he said, her response to his undivided attention had always been the same; she was a rabbit fixed in the headlights of an oncoming car, unable to move, save herself and her body responded as it always did, softening to him. He felt the change and, sure of his power, he turned her to face him. Instinct drew her to him and she leaned into the haven of his body, waiting for him to tell her that he’d missed her, to ask her what was wrong, to do what she’d asked and talk to her.
Instead he took something from his pocket. A strand of fire that blazed in the light as he moved to fasten it about her neck.
‘I had this made for you for our anniversary next month.’
‘It’s not our anniversary…’
‘The anniversary of the day we first met.’
Belle felt as if she were being split in two. The physical half was standing safe, protected, within the circle of Ivo’s arms. But all of her that was emotion, heart, the woman who’d dug deep and, with the help of her friends, found the strength to confront her past, stood outside, looking on with horror as she was drawn in by this glittering proof that he had thought of her, cherished the memory of the moment when their lives had first connected.
‘No…’
She barely whispered the word as the gems touched her throat. A single thread of diamonds to circle her neck. Beautiful.
Cold.
If his heart was a diamond, maybe he could have given her that. But the warm, beating flesh required more, something that was beyond him. That she had once thought was beyond her…
‘Please, Ivo. Don’t do this…’
It took a supreme act of will to force up her chin, look him directly in the face, find the strength to break free, for both of them.
‘No,’ she repeated, this time with more certainty. And, taking a step back, she brushed the necklace away, taking him by surprise so that it flew from his hand, skidded across the floor.
This wasn’t about desire. Not for him. It wasn’t even as basic as lust. This was all about control.
‘No more.’
She took another step away, then turned and, abandoning her make-up, she picked up her bag, holding him at arm’s length when, instinctively, he made a move to take it from her.
Only then, when she was sure he would keep his distance, did she turn, walk away on legs that felt as if they were treading on an underfilled airbed. On feet that didn’t seem to be one hundred per cent in contact with the ground.
Every part of her hurt. It was worse than that first day on the mountains when she’d thought she’d die if she had to force her feet to push the pedal one more time.
That had been purely physical pain. Muscle, sinew, bone.
This cut to the heart. If she’d ever doubted how much she loved him, every step taking her away from him hammered the message home. But love, true love, involved sacrifice. Ivo had taken her on trust, had accepted without question everything she’d told him about her life before they’d met. Before she became ‘Belle Davenport’. She’d done two utterly selfish things in her life—abandoned her sister and married Ivo Grenville. It was time to confront the past, find the courage to put both of those things right.
Her rucksack was where she’d left it, battered, grubby, out of place in the perfection of the Regency hall. They were a match, she thought, as she picked it up, slung it over her shoulder. She’d always been out of place here. A stranger in her own life.
The door had been propped open by the florists who were ferrying in boxes of flowers. Grateful that she wouldn’t have to find the strength to open it, she walked down the steps and out into the street.
On her own again and very much ‘scared witless…’ but certain, as she hadn’t been for a very long time, of the rightness of what she was doing.
Belle’s flat—small, slightly shabby—welcomed her as the great house in Belgravia never had. Unable to believe her good fortune, she’d bought it the moment she’d signed her first contract following one of those chance-in-a-million breaks. Her fairy-godmother had come in the unlikely guise of a breakfast show host who, when her brief appearance manning the phones on the telethon he was presenting had lit up the switchboard, had run with it and, playing up to the public’s response, had offered her a guest appearance on his show. Not quite knowing what to do with her, he’d suggested she do a weather spot.
For some reason her flustered embarrassment at her very shaky grasp of geography had touched the viewers’ hearts.
One of the gossip magazines had run a feature on her and within weeks she’d had an agent and a serious contract to go out and talk to people in the street, in their offices, in their homes, asking their opinions on anything from the price of bread to the latest health fad.
Even now she didn’t understand how it had happened but, from a situation where she and her bank did their best to ignore each other, suddenly she was being invited into the manager’s office for a chat over a cup of coffee. They hadn’t been able to do enough for her, especially once she’d demonstrated that investing in bricks and mortar—securing herself a home against the time when the sympathy wore thin—had been her first priority.
Against all the odds, she’d gradually moved from her spot as light relief to the centre of the breakfast television sofa, picking up the long-term security of a multi-millionaire husband on the way.
But she’d kept her flat.
She hadn’t needed Ivo—financial genius that he was—to advise her to let it rather than sell it when they’d married. She would never part with it. It wasn’t just that it was a good investment, that it had been her first, her only proper home; it represented, at some fundamental level, a different, truthful kind of security.
After her last tenant had left she’d made the excuse that it needed refurbishing and taken it off the agency books. Almost as if she’d been preparing for this moment.
Shivering, she dumped her bags in the hall, switched on the heating. Looked around. Touched one of the walls for reassurance. The stones in her wedding ring caught the light, flashed back at her, and she stood there for a moment, lost in the memory of the moment when Ivo had placed it on her finger. Then it had been the sun that had caught the stones in the antique ring as he’d pledged to keep her safe, protect her.
He had. He’d done everything he’d promised. But it wasn’t enough. And she slipped the ring from her finger.
Then, in a frenzy of activity, she made the bed, unpacked her things. Stuffed everything into the washing machine.
Ivo was wrong. She wasn’t tired. Her body clock was all over the place and she was buzzing. Once she’d showered, she sorted herself out a pair of trousers, a shirt, a sweater from the jumbled mess in her bag, made a cup of tea and switched on her computer.
Her first priority was to send emails to Claire and Simone to let them know that she was home safely. Update them.
…I’ve moved into my old flat. It needs redecorating, but that’s okay. It’ll be something to keep me busy in the long winter evenings.
She added a little wry smiley.
I hope you both had uneventful trips home since I suspect life is about to get a little bumpy for all of us. Take care. Love, Belle.
She hit ‘send’. Sat back. Remembered Simone’s face as she’d warned her against doing anything hasty. Telling her that Ivo could help…
No. This was something she had to do herself. And, brushing aside the ache, she began to search the ’net for information on how she could find her sister.
The good news was that new legislation meant that not only mothers could register to contact children given up for adoption, but family too.
The bad news was that Daisy had to make the first move.
Unless she’d signed up to find her birth family—and, for the life of her, Belle couldn’t imagine why she would want to—there would be no connection.
Ivo could help…
The tempting little voice whispered in her ear. He would have contacts…
She shut it out, filled in the online form with all the details she had. If that produced no results, there were agencies that specialised in helping to trace adopted family members.
She’d give it a week before she went down that route. Right now, she had a more pressing concern. She had to call her hairdresser and grovel.
‘Eeuw…’ George, her stylist, a man who understood a hair emergency when he saw it, picked up a dry blonde strand to examine its split ends and shuddered. ‘I knew it was going to be bad but really, Belle, this is shocking. What have you being doing to it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I suppose that would explain it. I hope you haven’t got any plans for the rest of the day. It’s going to need a conditioning treatment, colour—’
‘I want you to cut it,’ Belle said, before he could get into his stride.
‘Well, obviously. These ends will have to go.’
‘No. Cut it. Short. And let’s lose the platinum blonde, um? Go for something nearer my real colour.’
‘Oh, right. And can you remember what that is?’ he asked, arching a brow at her in the mirror.
Vaguely. She’d started off white blonde, like her sister, but her own hair had darkened as she’d got older. She’d reversed the process as soon as she’d discovered the hair colouring aisle in the supermarket, but if she was going for ‘real’, her hair was as good a place as any to start.
‘Cheerful mouse?’ she offered.
‘An interesting concept, darling. Somehow I don’t think it will catch on.’ Then, having examined her roots, presumably to check for himself, he said, ‘Have you cleared this with your image consultant? Your agent?’ When she didn’t respond, ‘Your husband?’
The mention of Ivo brought a lump to her throat.
She fought it down.
It was her hair, her image, her life and, by way of answer, she leaned forward, picked up a pair of scissors lying on the ledge in front of her, extended a lock of hair and, before George could stop her, she cut through it, just below her ear. Then, still holding the scissors, she said, ‘Do you want to finish it or shall I?’
CHAPTER THREE
SHOPPING was not Belle’s usual method of displacement activity, but when she’d finally woken on Sunday the reality of what she’d done, of being alone—not just alone in her bed but alone for ever—had suddenly hit home and the day seemed to stretch like a desert ahead of her.
Finding herself sitting at her computer, waiting for an email with news of Daisy, leaping on an incoming message, only to discover it was some unspeakably vile spam, she forced herself to move.
She didn’t know how the Adoption Register worked, but it was the weekend and it seemed unlikely she’d hear from anyone before the middle of the week at the earliest. More likely the middle of next month.
For the moment there was nothing more she could do and, besides, she had a much more immediate problem. She had nothing to wear for work on Monday.
Clearly, she rationalized, the sensible thing would be to call Ivo and arrange to go and pick up at least part of her wardrobe. She had a new pale pink suit that would show off her tan, look great with her new hair colouring. And she had to have shoes. There were a hundred things…
Or maybe just one.
Last night she’d felt so utterly alone. She had yearned for that brief flare of passion in Ivo’s eyes. To know that there was one person in the world who needed her, if only for a moment.
Pathetic.
But if she went back today, if he launched another attack on her senses when she was at her lowest, she suspected she would not be strong enough to resist. And what then?
If, by some miracle, she found Daisy, she would be torn in two. She would have to deny Daisy a second time or tell him everything. Tell him that, far from being up front and honest with him, she had lied and lied and lied. That he didn’t know the woman he’d married.
And she’d lose him all over again.
At least this way she retained some dignity, the possibility that if, when, the truth came out, he would—maybe—understand. Be grateful for the distance. Even be happy for her.
Which was all very well and noble, but it still left her with the problem of what she was going to wear tomorrow.
Since she needed to get out of the flat before she succumbed to temptation, she dealt with both problems in one stroke and called a taxi—no more chauffeur on tap—and took herself off to one of the vast shopping outlets that had sprung up around London and lost herself among the crowds.
She had been told often enough that the golden rule was to change your hair or change your clothes but not both at the same time. As she flipped through the racks of clothes, she ignored it. She was done with living by other people’s rules.
She fell in love with an eau-de-nil semi-tailored jacket. Exactly the kind of thing her style ‘guru’ had warned her not to wear. She wasn’t tall enough or thin enough to carry it off, apparently. On the contrary, she barely made five and a half feet and her figure was of the old-fashioned hourglass shape. But all that cycling had at least had one good outcome—she was trimmer all over. And with her hair cut short she felt taller.
She lifted the collar, pushed up the sleeves and was rewarded with a smile from the saleswoman.
‘That looks great on you.’ Then, ‘Did anyone ever tell you that you look a lot like Belle Davenport?’
‘No,’ she said truthfully. Then, ‘She wouldn’t wear something like this, would she?’
‘No, but you’re thinner than her. And taller.’
Belle grinned. ‘You think so? They do say that television adds ten pounds.’
‘Trust me, you look fabulous.’
She felt fabulous, but she was so accustomed to listening to advice that she had little confidence in her own judgement. But the other jackets—neat, waist-hugging ‘Belle Davenport’ style jackets in pastel colours—that she’d tried were more expensive, so the woman had no incentive to lie.
‘Thank you,’ she said. And bought its twin in a fine brown tweedy mixture that looked perfect with her new hair and matched her eyes. Then she set about teaming them with soft cowl necks, classic silk shirts, trousers—she always wore skirts on air—and neat ankle boots.
More than once, as she browsed through the racks, she saw someone take a second glance, but her new haircut and George’s brilliant streaky blend of light brown through to sun-kissed blonde—his very inventive interpretation of cheerful mouse—fooled them. She couldn’t possibly be who they thought she was.
There was an exhilarating freedom in this moment of anonymity and when she spotted a photo booth she piled in with her packages, grinning into the camera as she posed for a picture so that she could share the joke with Claire and Simone.
Then she passed an interior design shop.
She wasn’t the only one that needed a make-over and if time was going to be hanging heavy on her hands she might as well make a start on the flat.
When she was done there, she was so laden with the in-house designer’s print outs, swatches, carpet squares and colour charts that she had to call it a day and take another taxi. At which point she wondered about buying herself a car.
One of her very early ‘make a fool of Belle’ projects for the television had been a driving course. Not that much of a fool, actually, since she’d taken to it like a duck to water and ended up doing an off-road course, a circuit in a grand prix car and driving a double-decker bus through a skid test. And earned herself another contract.
She’d bought a little car then, but once she’d married Ivo there had always been a chauffeur in town and there had been no point in keeping it.
The taxi driver was a mine of information on the subject and by the time he delivered her to her door he’d made a call arranging for her to test drive a zippy little BMW convertible the following afternoon.
‘You did what?’
She hadn’t long been home from the studio on Monday afternoon when the doorbell rang.
Her first thought was that it was the press who, following up her appearance on the television that morning, would be clamouring for the story behind her ‘new look’. Since neither her agent nor her PR consultant could answer their questions—she hadn’t talked to either of them yet—the gossip columnists would have called the house, which meant they would now have a much bigger story.
That she was no longer living with Ivo. That the ‘perfect’ marriage was over.
Of course it could be her agent—he kept a television on in his office so that he could keep an eye on his clients—demanding to know what on earth she thought she was doing, messing with success. Ruining the image he’d gone to so much trouble and expense—he always took expenditure personally, even when it was her money he was spending—to build. Anxious to arrange interviews, a photo session so that he could ‘sell’ her new look. Wanting to know what spin the PR guys should put on the fact that she’d moved out of the family home, since, like the press, he’d go there first.
A new romance for her? Positive, upbeat, radiant…
A cheating husband? Sympathetic, brave…
A marriage that had collapsed under the strain of the pressure of their careers? Very sad. Still good friends…
She’d seen it all a hundred times.
The light on the answering machine had been flashing when she’d got home. She had ignored it, just as she now ignored the doorbell.
Instead, she was glued to her laptop, anxiously checking through the messages to see if there was anything from the Adoption Register.
Nothing. Instead she clicked on the site she’d bookmarked, the one with personal adoption stories.
A second longer peal on the bell warned her that whoever was at the front door wasn’t about to go away and, knowing that she would have to face the music sooner rather than later, she picked up the entry phone.
‘Yes?’ she said, her voice neutral.
‘Belle…’
She caught her breath, almost doubling up with shock at the sound of Ivo’s voice…
No…
It was the middle of the afternoon. He should be in his office, all of London at his feet, both figuratively and metaphorically. He didn’t do ‘personal’, not in office hours. Not ever…
She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, just buzzed him up, taking the time it took for him to walk up to her flat—an old converted town house, there were no lifts—to recover. Taking those few moments to put herself back together before she opened the door.
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